Monthly Archives: August 2007

Day 732: Shooting At 1507 Magazine St.

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[Update: After a small email flurry, Councilmember Stacy Head has offered to convene a Lower Garden District meeting "at which time we can discuss a variety of quality of life issues affecting the area." Councilmember Fielkow (fellow Wisconsin alum) has promised to attend as well.]

Arrived home at 5:45PM to hear four crystal-clear gun shots at the corner of Magazine & Race streets. My front door is not right on Magazine St., which prevented me from seeing anything, and my first instinct was to shut the door, lock it and call D and my neighbor. (Only to find out that our AC was out thanks to the lightning.) From the front window I saw nothing and, then a couple of minutes later, people milling outside Mojo Coffeehouse pointing at St. Vincent’s Guest House. Within a few more minutes, an NOPD cruiser and an ambulance were parked at the intersection, and a large black man was pulled out of the guest house on a stretcher. Good response time.

Since returning to town in early 2006, I’ve seen squad cars, with lights on and sirens blaring, at that joint almost everyday. Young, old, men and women are lined up for questioning, thrown out for makeshift meth labs and drug dealing and taken away after overdosing, but never have I observed someone carried out on a stretcher there following a shooting. Again, I’ve only somewhat freaked out about increased criminal activity in my neighborhood since people began to trickle back into the post-K city – drug deals on my block, D’s car’s hubcaps, mail and packages stolen, etc. – because there is a lot worse going on all over this city. Yet, there are few things quite as jarring and visceral as hearing the sequential firing of a gun not a hundred yards away from you.

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Standing outside with a lot of nervous energy, I called Brian Denzer and blathered at him non-stop for about five minutes, while he calmly listened. “Hope this makes the blotter … please record it for your crime map … is there a way to indicate hotspots on the map … I’m gonna write Stacy Head right now … sick of walking by that place all the time and being scared out of my wits … ” Brian advised me to talk to call the Captain over at Sixth District and discuss with him all I’ve observed about St. Vincent’s in the last year and also to find out who owns the property (one Peter Schreiber – can someone let him know I’d like a word with him?).

So, yeah, after standing in the rain for 30 minutes waiting for the Magazine St. bus (downtown traffic was all farkakte thanks to the first Saints home game), no AC and a shooting at St. Vincent’s this evening, you can say I’m looking forward to a long weekend of doing absolutely nothing.

Day 732: Grab Bag

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Who Killed Beethoven? - Dun dun dun duuuuuuun …

Examiners in the UK are asked to “make science easier” – Unintelligent design crosses the pond, thus making us not the only G7 nation with low expectations of our kids.  Or as England’s equivalent of the DoE(dumacation) responds,”Deliberately increasing the proportion of easier questions is a clear example of lowering the bar.”

Teachers, bypass NCLB and read your kids some Rilke!  In English or the original German?

All Your IP Are Belong To Teh Google – Google may own anything you work with in any of their services including Maps API, Google Earth, Documents, Calendar, GMail … and Blogger. 

Knowledge Is Priceless, But Textbooks Are Not – A mother sending her child off to college offers great advice on locating discount textbooks online.  Wait until girlie goes to grad school and sees the pricetags on Springer-Verlag and Elsevier journal subscriptions.  Yet another reason to support Project Gutenberg and fight the publishing industry’s daylight robbery.

Mysterious Fairyland Spider Web Found In Texas - Dang!  I was hoping it came from one Shelob-sized spider.  Why do “Texas” and “spider” remind me of the following bumper sticker?

Day 732: An Inkling Of Hope

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brimful, who lives all the way in California, gets it.  I still have a tiny bit of hope for America, as long as our national dialogue soon refocuses on how to make America better.

It is bad enough that the handling of Katrina was so deplorable. What’s far worse is the notion that the nation grew tired of talking about it. Or worse yet that, even now, knowing everything we know about how this disaster was exacerbated by flagrant mishandling, do people choose to talk about the looting that occurred during the hurricane. I know it’s wrong to make snap judgments, but when people find the first noteworthy topic about Katrina to be the looting, I immediately hold those people under deep suspicion and question their awareness about the world, the country, and the administration currently governing us.

I don’t mean to rant, but then again, maybe I do. It bothers me that there isn’t still widespread ranting about this. It bothers me that elected officials can discuss that the war in Iraq was one mistake after another and claim it is now of paramount importance to fix that and turn the tide. Yet, those same officials are dodgy and shuffle their feet, and would be all too happy to pretend there is nothing left to be done in New Orleans.

Day 732: Second Anniversary Media Roundup

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Jeffrey Buchanan of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial – Bush Administration Misleads On Gulf Coast Rebuilding – “Despite the Bush Administration declaring to have done its job by sending the ‘big check’, a purported $116 billion, for rebuilding Gulf Coast communities, the article finds less then $35 billion available for rebuilding. Less then 42% of this money has been spent to date despite overwhelming continuing needs.”

NPR: Much Long-Term Recovery Aid Unspent – Another must-read (listen) for those taken in by the “$114 billion in aid” number, which Bush and Donald Powell continue to bring up as the completion of federal obligation in this area.

New Orleans Councilwoman Shelley Midura also sets the record straight at Daily Kos – New Orleans: Mission NOT Accomplished

CNN presents Katrina: Two Years Later – Features Karen Gadbois, Laureen Lentz, Squandered Heritage, PRC‘s Michelle Kimball and the City’s erroneous demolitions. Makes me want to help Idabelle Joshua move into Penya Moses-Fields‘s home.

CNBC’s Against The Tide: The Battle For New Orleans – Features the Citizens’ Road Home Action Team and Shell. My dad liked it, so it must be good.

NPR: New Orleans Suffers Crisis in Mental Health Care – This made me pull the car over to weep. “Family members of the mentally ill plot ways to get their loved ones put in jail, because the parish prison has 60 adult psychiatric beds where patients can get consistent care.”

Anderson Cooper: No Right For Us To Feel Fatigued

NPR’s News & Notes: Bouncing Back From Katrina – Farai Chideya interviews our very own Cliff, Eban and G-Bitch.

Chris Johnston talks about Rising Tide and rebuilding with Christopher Penn of Financial Aid Podcast.

Alan Gutierrez makes a guest appearance at HuffPo in When The Saints Go Marching In.

Dave Zirin, winner of Most Entertaining Rising Tide 2007 Speaker, gives us a high-five at The Houston Chronicle.

Last but not least …

Their money?! – Speaking at a New Orleans school, our Headless Of State makes an insensitive and divisive comment.

The citizens of this country thus far have paid out $114 billion in tax revenues — their money — to help the folks down here.

Never mind the blatant lie of the $114 billion payout (see first and second articles in this list) , did your president just say “their money” to us? Funny, I don’t recall not paying federal taxes to the United States government on moving to Louisiana, and didn’t get a note that a tax discount, much less a reprieve, was proffered on Louisianans for being storm/flood victims. No, we paid our taxes like all good Americans. Therefore, a portion of that $114 billion is mine and, horrifyingly enough, that of the thousands who died here during the storm and the subsequent flood because the federal money promised to further shore up our levee system was busy being spent elsewhere. Calling it “their money” divorces us from the American family, while New Orleans and Louisiana are very much a part of the Union. That Bush and his idiotic supporters think we are not – or, even worse, that we are second-class citizens – is the crux of the slow recovery.

As goes New Orleans, so goes the nation. Mark my words.

Updates: A.M In The Morning – Katrina, Bush’s New Orleanian Betrayal and The American Way

BBC: In Pictures: New Orleans’s Brass Bands

Day 730: The Hope For New Orleans

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When scrutinizing this area’s “screwed up and self-defeating political culture,” remember that the worst offenders are the ones who steal what you see in the above picture away from our children.  If for nothing else, fight for New Orleans’s young, America’s young.  Please don’t throw our babies out with the floodwater.

“Don’t ever get over the tragedy of New Orleans.   It’s your tragedy.”

Day 730: We Are Here

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Nostalgia is not something I indulge in much because a) I’m not one to romanticize the past and b) my past was all about getting to the future. Every once in a long while, something will remind me of a good time I enjoyed while a child or college student, but it was mostly an emotional and cross-cultural struggle for the knowledge and independence to get where I am right now. And, unlike native-born Americans my age, I didn’t enjoy a nice lull of history while growing up. It was alright because my mother and father were there.

When I do remember the past, it’s to remind myself of how things worked out and how lucky I am. At this very moment two years ago, I was seated in the trusty grey steed (Honda) with D and what we deemed the most important of our worldly belongings, driving through Mississippi trying to get to Texas. We didn’t reach Houston for another good ten hours. Who knew how long we were to be away from what we then called home? It was alright, because txyankee was there.

I was to be married on September 4th and then again, American-style, on September 24th. That didn’t come to pass. D left for Wisconsin for work and to be with his mother who died later that year, right around Thanksgiving. My father’s little brother died the very next day. It was alright (not that I knew it at that wretched time) because Anne was there.

Mardi Gras 2006 marked my return to New Orleans, to an empty home and a strange new way to live in an old and known place. Much of 2006 was a blur, but a good one in which I met George, Alexis and a few truly kindred souls I’d never have met had it not been for this horrible and, sadly, ongoing Thing. On days when life seems positively disgusting in New Orleans, it is alright, because they are there.

Marrying D this year is the best damned decision I’ve ever made. Someone give me a medal or a cookie (or both) for choosing to spend the rest of my life with this man. Everything is A-OK, because he is there.

So many lost their lives, family members, pets, homes, life’s belongings in so painful and undignified a manner and to a system in which they placed all of their trust. I lost nothing but a tree in my backyard that we wanted down anyway, and had to give up my home for six months and my sweetie for more than a year. It is a lot more than alright, because I am here.

We are the lucky ones. Through the anxiety, depression, anger, bad government, crime, mismanagement, hurricane seasons, parties, parades and aftermaths, we have life and limb, and each other, with which to move forward. We will continue on this journey, because we are here.

Day 730: “It’s A National Obligation”

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Two years after the storm/flood/disaster began, Douglas Brinkley lambasts the Bush administration and City officials for speaking out of both sides of their mouths regarding the recovery of New Orleans.  Brinkley speaks sense, but it is still too early in the game for this level of final analysis, or such a tone of finality, on New Orleans.  This city has a serious repopulation Catch-22 and it’s really difficult to predict the future of an area in the nascence of its recovery.  Yet, I agree with Brinkley in his assessment that “the Bush administration actually wants neighborhoods below sea level to die on the vine” and that decisions on Category 5 storm protection and economic recovery need to be made now before we lose the waiting game.

… The answer to New Orleans’s levee woes is painfully obvious: money and willpower. Common sense dictates that the endangered areas – if repopulated (and that is a big if) – demand levees that can sustain Category 5 storms. It’s a national obligation. Entire blocks are moldering away while the federal government lifts only a cursory hand to reverse the desultory trend.

To be fair, Bush’s apparent post-Katrina inaction policy makes some cold, pragmatic sense. If the U.S. government is not going to rebuild the levees to survive a Category 5 storm – to be finished at the earliest in 2015 and at an estimated cost of $40 billion, far eclipsing the extravagant bill for the entire Interstate Highway System – then options are limited.

But what makes the current inaction plan so infuriating is that it’s deceptive, offering up this open-armed spin to storm victims: “Come back to New Orleans.” Why can’t Bush look his fellow citizens in the eye and tell them what seems to be the ugly truth? That as long as he’s commander-in-chief, there won’t be an entirely reconstructed levee system.

… Right now New Orleans is having a hard time lobbying on its own behalf. Minnesota’s Twin Cities have about 20 Fortune 500 companies to draw in private-sector money to help rebuild the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis. New Orleans has one, Entergy, which is verging on bankruptcy. So besides U.S. taxpayers and port fees, New Orleans must count on spiked-up tourist dollars to jumpstart the post-Katrina rebuild.

But this is where the bizarre paradox of living in a city of ruins comes into play. Out of one side of its mouth the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce says “Come on down, folks! We’re not underwater!” Yet these same civic boosters – viscerally aware that the Bush administration is treating the desperate plight of New Orleans in an out-of-sight, out-of-mind fashion – don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them large chunks of reconstruction cash. New Orleans is both bragging about normalcy and poor-mouthing itself, confusing Americans about what the real state of the city is.

Day 729: Rising Tide II – Kudos From New York

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I’d like to take this moment to let everyone know that the previous post was my own critical view of myself and our group as bloggers and activists, and what more the NOLA bloggers can stand to accomplish in the way of civic activism.  It is my blog after all, and I think about what I want to think about, like trying to gauge how much energy an action needs or whether we’re spinning our wheels .  For instance, we put a lot of effort into the January crime march and the Eddie Jordan protest - what and where did it get us? 

And, yeah, as a New Orleanian, I still agonize over the we do what we do whenever we can do it sentiment.  The whole conference had a “Yay Us!” bent to it – my panel included accomplishments and the millions of miles we have left to go.

Fighting for New Orleans isn’t a popularity contest.  But, we have to put ourselves out there as a coherent group with a coherent platform in order to win friends and supporters.  To that end, emails like this one from Mark LaFlaur of Levees Not War are really cool.

I want to say what a pleasure it was to see y’all at the total success known as RT2. The conference was richly populated with intelligent committed people (both the presenters and in the audience), and I can’t wait till next year’s. In fact, I come away committed to dedicating the next twelvemonth to acting on what I learned this past weekend and to bringing more accomplishments and ideas (and, let’s hope, even Congressional funding!) to share with our fellows at RT3. Anyway, you and Kim and everyone did a great job in pulling it together and I hope you feel well content with how it all came out. Take a little time to rest, for you surely earned it. 

Big huge thanks to Sophmom, Cynthia, Scout Prime, Wounded Bird, Emmitt Thrower, Mark LaFlaur and anyone I missed for travelling here to spend your weekend with us!  And, now, I rest.